CoSchedule Review: Grading the Blog Editorial Calendar Tool

December 6, 2017

As any experienced blogger could tell you, keeping up with the demands of a growing website is no small task. There are posts to be written, guides to be published, social promotion to be conducted, tasks to assign… the list goes on. Whether you’re working on your own or with a team, it can get difficult to keep track of everything. Luckily, there’s a good solution: an app called CoSchedule. This is a tool I fully believe every blogger can benefit from, whether you’re just starting a blog or manage a massively popular site.

What Is CoSchedule?

CoSchedule is a popular editorial calendar that is designed to tie in with WordPress. Basically, it helps you manage every aspect of your editorial process. You can use it to assign tasks to your team, build a publication schedule around your blog ideas, publish WordPress content, and even schedule social posts to go out automatically – all from one easy, well-designed calendar!

Everything is synced automatically with WordPress, which means you can publish in CoSchedule and it will publish in WordPress – or you can edit in WordPress, and it will sync with CoSchedule. This application is useful for any webmaster, but it’s particularly handy for those working with teams of people as it makes organization a breeze.

Why Is CoSchedule Useful?

Simply put, CoSchedule can help you stay organized and on track. Organization is key to success in any endeavor, but it’s particularly important when it comes to web based businesses. CoSchedule syncs all your information, all your tasks, all your social accounts, etc. into one easy to use program. It allows you to take a quick snapshot glance at your entire production schedule.

Best of all, it’s super easy to use. At first glance a full calendar might look intimidating, but after a few hours of working with CoSchedule you’ll start to see just how well designed and developed this program is. Everything is found on the main dashboard; from scheduled posts to social media to assigned tasks – find it all right in front of you!

How Does CoSchedule Work?

CoSchedule is 100% synced with WordPress, and was clearly designed with WordPress development in mind. When you first start using the program, you’ll be prompted to sync your new CoSchedule account with your existing WordPress site. From then on, everything is synced up – what you do in CoSchedule will show up in WordPress, and vice versa.

The great part about this synchronicity is that you can do just about everything via CoSchedule. Say you have a batch of 5 articles that you want to write and publish this week. Simply start a new page or post via CoSchedule, and a blank page/post will show up in WordPress. From there, you can add the details of the article, assign tasks to your team (tell your writer to create a rough draft, your editor to proof and publish, etc.) and that’s it! When your writer goes into CoSchedule to complete the task, they’ll be able to see any information you left them, then click through CS directly into the specified blank WordPress post. Easy, peasy!

How Do We Use It?

Simply put… well, we use it for everything. We work with a talented team of writers, editors, social media experts, and admins. CoSchedule is invaluable in keeping everything synced up and in good order.

Every week, admins assign new tasks for the upcoming publication period. Writers are assigned tasks like “Keyword Research”, “Rough Draft”, etc. while editors are assigned “Edit”, “Publish”, etc. Our social experts are assigned “Social Promotion” tasks, which vary depending on the type of content published. ALL these assignments are issued at once by our admins. So, instead of 5+ emails, it’s just one-and-done!

Long story short, CoSchedule is the only production schedule we use for our business, and it helps tremendously. Productivity is way up, and we all spend so much less time emailing back and forth.

Bottom Line

Overall, CoSchedule is an excellent program that we definitely recommend. It’s best for big teams, but I could see that even a small team of 2 or 3 people (or even just 1!) could benefit from the organizational benefits that CoSchedule offers. The increase in productivity that CoSchedule provides pays for itself!